Inside Snoopy Mania: Why the 74-Year-Old Beagle Is More Popular Than Ever, Especially at the Holidays (Exclusive)

• Charles M. Schulz introduced Snoopy in the Peanuts comics in 1950, and he soon became a breakout star

• Snoopy is seemingly more popular than ever, with Gen Z fans flocking to shares memes and buy merch featuring the iconic dog

• Experts talk to PEOPLE about why Snoopy has found his way into the hearts of generations of people, particularly around the holidays

He’s white with black ears, he can’t talk and he’s one of the most beloved cartoons in the whole world. He’s Snoopy.

Charles M. Schulz (who widely used the nickname “Sparky”) began writing and drawing Peanuts as a daily cartoon strip in 1950, starring a boy named Charlie Brown. In the third-ever strip, readers were introduced to Charlie’s dog, Snoopy, a Beagle who could be fun-loving, cunning, sharp, comforting, self-obsessed, considerate and everything else in between.

Schulz would add an array of characters to the Peanuts gang, but all these decades later, it’s Snoopy who has the loudest, proudest fan base. And while some parts of the past have struggled to adapt to the Internet age, Snoopy is more popular than ever.

In the winter of 2023, Snoopy went viral thanks to a plush sold at CVS of the pup in a puffer jacket and hat. Soon, puffer jacket Snoopy was everywhere — on socks, sweaters, backpacks and more. The character is generally a major hit online, with dedicated meme pages and 2 million followers on his own TikTok account. In 2023, he even brought some levity to Bradley Cooper’s movie Maestro. 

And though Snoopy is popular year-round, Melissa Menta, senior vice president of marketing and communications for Peanuts Worldwide, tells PEOPLE that if you most associate the Peanuts gang with the end of the year, that’s not surprising. The company calls the time from Halloween — and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown — through Christmas the “Super Bowl of Peanuts.”

Related: Which Charlie Brown Character You Are, Based on Your Zodiac Sign

Menta says that 1965’s A Charlie Brown Christmas marked the beginning of fans associating Peanuts with the fall. “It's a testament to Charles Schulz, Lee Mendelson and Bill Melendez, the three creators of a Charlie Brown Christmas,” she explains. “It truly was destination viewing for the entire U.S. when it debuted.” The special’s jazz soundtrack, created by Vince Guaraldi, also became an indelible part of the holiday season for many Americans. Great Pumpkin followed the next year, and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving came in 1973.

But why Snoopy, and why is he so big now? Roy Schwartz, a pop culture historian and journalist, tells PEOPLE in an email, “Snoopy never really went anywhere. He’s still a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon, still found in every toy store, still (after a break) a mascot for MetLife.” But as for his newly charged popularity, he credits social media and its ability to spread something far and wide: “And Snoopy has always been versatile, with a variety of moods, expressions, outfits and scenarios over the decades, which makes him perfect for memes and GIFs.”

“I also think that, as a cute but irreverent dog, he fits the Kawaii culture that’s mainstreamed among Gen Zers,” he explains. “And if you want to dig deeper, I’d also say that he’s an icon of nostalgia, of a comforting yesteryear, which is a big part of current Gen Z and millennial culture.”

Harold Buchholz, a cartoonist and the co-host of the Un-Packing Peanuts podcast, explains that Snoopy’s meme-ability is in part because of how Schulz would draw the canine hero. He and the other Peanuts characters are drawn in really simple shapes that help make them “iconic.” But he points out that if you look closely at Snoopy, Schulz would draw him differently in different situations. “When he’s lying on the dog house, lying on his back, he’s massive, and then if he’s sitting down, he’s tiny ... What Schulz seemed to instinctively know is that we know it’s Snoopy no matter how he’s drawn. He chooses the most appealing, iconic drawing he can. He breaks all the rules of Snoopy’s physics. I’m sure he drove all the animators crazy.”

Buchholz says some of Snoopy’s appeal boils down to the way Schulz drew him. “It’s a lot easier for us, strangely, to identify with something that is so simply boiled down to the little nose and eyes and ears. Snoopy is potentially open to anybody to experience instantly and relate to.”

As for Snoopy’s relevance with Gen Z, Buchholz notes, “Snoopy is in a world of humans, and he’s reliant on humans because he’s a dog. And he finds his own path through imagination and and individuality in that world. Maybe Gen Z identity with feeling small in a world that doesn’t feel like your own or doesn’t always make sense.”

“He’s vulnerable, but he’s also resilient. He can struggle, he can feel deeply, and his emotions swing wildly, but he always bounces back,” he continues. The cartoonist also thinks that when Schulz introduced Woodstock — the tiny bird who’s Snoopy’s best friend — in 1969, he gave Snoopy another important dimension. Snoopy is “grounded” by Woodstock, who is even smaller and needs more help than he does. And when he leads Woodstock and the other birds in the Beagle Scouts, he is the “leader of small things.” “He recognizes the value of small things, and I think that’s something that resonates with a lot of people.”

Schulz died in February 2000, a month after the Peanuts comic strip had stopped running. But the Peanuts and their stories lived on in TV specials, feature films, merch and, now, people reposting the panels to Instagram, the perfect medium for a lovely little comic.

“No other comic strip, even Garfield, has had the same merchandising success, including toys, apparel, movies, TV shows, and everything in between, making it a multibillion-dollar property,” Schwartz says of Peanuts. “And no other comic strip has had as many books and articles analyzing its psychology, philosophy, and theology.”

Schulz, he adds, “had the amazing ability to address the big questions of life through small children, to make intelligent points with humor and deceptive simplicity.”

And, when it comes to Gen Z’s affection for Snoopy and his friends, some of it comes just from having the specials and comics and stuffed animals passed from generation to generation. Kathleen McConnaghy, a 26-year-old Snoopy fanatic, tells PEOPLE that her parents instilled a love for Peanuts comics and specials when she was a kid.

“When I was younger, I was like, ‘This is dumb.’ And then I got older, I was like, ‘Wait a second, Snoopy is really cute.’ ” Snoopy also serves as a shorthand between people, she says. “If you see someone with something Snoopy in the wild, you’re like, ‘Oh they’re cool. They get it.’ ”

McConnaghy, who plans to get a Snoopy tattoo sometime soon, says that Beagle Scouts Snoopy is her favorite. That version is her mom’s favorite, and her mom gets her a Beagle Scouts ornament every Christmas. Buchholz’s favorite is Joe Cool (who you’ll also spot in Andy Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live Clubhouse). Menta, meanwhile, is a fan of the 1984 TV special It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown, in which Snoopy dances in a Flashdance-inspired costume.

Menta points out that Snoopy means different things worldwide. While American audiences are very familiar with the TV specials — plus the new episodes on Apple TV+ — in many countries he’s more popular as a fashion statement on clothing. In the 1980s in Spain, the youth started saying “I swear to Snoopy” instead of “I swear to God.” In Japan, the famed poet Shuntaro Tanikawa translated Peanuts into Japanese, bringing it to a new fan base.

Menta says that Schulz always said in interviews, “I’m a little bit of every character, but everybody wants to be Snoopy.” Snoopy has been an astronaut, a hockey player, a chef, a construction worker, a baseball player, a dentist, an artist, a rock star, a writer, a cowboy and everything in between. Of course he's a beloved icon, too.

Read the original article on People